Dr. Stephen Loyd is the Chief of Medicine at the Mountain Home Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Johnson City, TN. Before his struggles with mental illness that led to opioid dependence, benzodiazepine abuse, and subsequent recovery, he was "an average internal medicine doctor teaching medical students."

Overdose in Women. Source: CDC. Click for link.

​Loyd's circuitous path gave him life purpose. In his words, he is now living his dream as a nationwide speaker on proper prescribing of controlled substances and substance abuse education, as well as:

Dr. Loyd's White House ONDCP Advocate for Action profile adds, "He is in recovery from his own prescription opioid and benzodiazepine disorder....Loyd has considerable expertise in neonatal addiction issues/neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), and is a vocal advocate for public health/public safety cooperation. He is charismatic, plain-spoken, and has a sense of humor in his lectures and presentations."

Dr. Loyd is featured in our mental health reform, chronic pain, and substance abuse educational videos to the right.

While substance abuse education and proper prescribing of controlled substances are tremendously important, we feel that today's prescription drug abuse problem in America is due to the pharmaceutical industry's failure in treating mental illness and the FDA allowing mental health pharma to have free reign on our mental health.

America's current prescription drug and heroin epidemic started in the 1990s when the ​FDA approved, regulatory bodies promoted, and pharmaceutical companies fraudulently marketed potent opioid analgesics for the treatment of all types of pain.

​The most common type of chronic pain is centralized chronic pain that is treated very similarly to depression, as shown below. Centralized pain can be difficult to treat because it is on a continuum. Click images below for to view the presentation, "Pain and Depression: What is the Relationship," by Dan Clauw, MD, professor of anesthesiology, rheumatology, and psychiatry at the University of Michigan (PDF of the slides).

The mental health incompetence and greed that created the prescription opioid epidemic is a small piece of society's failure in reducing suicide, preparing patients and families for the dying process, and treating several other mental disorders (anxiety, PTSD, addiction, anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, etc).

We have known for decades that any psychoactive substance has abuse potential. Solutions to the prescription drug epidemic will come from changes within the FDA, more oversight of psychoactive prescription drugmakers, and full access to all psychoactive drug research data.

Psychiatrist Alan Manevitz cautions, "no matter how successful ketamine proves to be, you can’t count on a single treatment to cure depression. You need to address all aspects of a person's disease, from the biological and the psychological to the social and environmental....Ketamine is not a miracle drug at all. It may momentarily take them away from that catastrophic place they’re in with depression, but you’re not addressing the rest of the patient. It’s a complex issue to treat psychiatric issues, and you have to treat the whole patient.”

Pharmaceutical companies have infamously closed their mental health divisions and reopened them when government funding was on the horizon. It's fair to say that Pharma has a stronger history of lawsuits than success in mental health.

​“The N.I.M.H. is not opposed to work with psychedelics, but I doubt we would make a major investment” - Thomas Insel, Past-Director
Natl Institute of Mental Health

From The Trip Treatment: "NIMH would need to see“a path to development” and suspects that “it would be very difficult to get a pharmaceutical company interested in developing this drug, since it cannot be patented.” It’s also unlikely that Big Pharma would have any interest in a drug that is administered only once or twice in the course of treatment."

Nora Volkow, Director of NIDA

“The main concern we have at NIDA in relation to this work is that the public will walk away with the message that psilocybin is a safe drug to use. In fact, its adverse effects are well known, although not completely predictable”

“Progress has been made in decreasing use of hallucinogens, particularly in young people. We would not want to see that trend altered”

"It is important to remind people that experimenting with drugs of abuse outside a research setting can produce serious harms"

​ LESSONS ON ABUSE

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​Johnansen and Krebs of Norway recognize the lack of novel drug development and bleak near future for mental health and addiction treatment, so they are Crowdfunding to Make Psychedelics and MDMA Free for Global Medical Use. Although it's tough to predict the precise benefit of psychedelics before larger studies are completed, Johansen and Krebs' passion for global well-being is remarkable. They co-authored a meta-analysis in 2012 showing LSD's effectiveness in treating alcoholism, and recently published a study using recent United States NSDUH survey data which found that individuals taking classical hallucinogens LSD, psilocybin (active ingredient in magic mushrooms), and mescaline (active ingredient in religious sacrament peyote of the Native American Church) were not at increased risk of developing 11 indicators of mental-health problems such as schizophrenia, psychosis, depression, anxiety orders, and suicide attempts. See more on their story and research here.

Classic hallucinogens are the only pharmaceutical known to occasion profound, life-changing spiritual experiences that bring complex issues to the forefront for patients.

Are psychedelics the wonder drug we've been waiting for?
No. However, they will be another tool in the mental health toolbox if integrated effectively into modern healthcare. Equally as important, we have a chance to study psychedelic medicines using today's technology and funding from the BRAIN Initiative.